ADVENTURE HOOK: A Town Called Abracadabra

Working my way chronologically through the original Twilight Zone episodes, courtesy of the Legend channel, this week I came upon a fourth season story, Valley of Shadow, that - superficially - reminded me of another old - but not so old - show, A Town Called Eureka (aka Eureka).

Both concerned hidden communities where "weird science" held sway as a result of their particular backstories.

This got me to thinking about how to employ such a locale in a fantasy RPG setting.

How much of a headache would it be for a Games Master if the player-characters stumbled across a secret community of eccentric magicians all working on developing new spells and potions... and even trying to create magical items?

I'm not talking about an Unseen University, Aretuza, or Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy "school" for magic, but a hothouse environment where geniuses of the sorcerous arts strive to take their science to the next level and push the boundaries of what is possible.

Would that concentration of magical energy in one space warp the fabric of reality?

Throw in some kind of "magical mishaps"  rule - either official or homegrown, depending on your system of choice - and you have a recipe for joyous chaos.

Why Would Your Character Want To Be Resurrected?

Buffy tells Spike about where she went when she died

I'm far too cynical/sceptical and logical to be a religious person, but I'd like to be able to believe that if there was some kind of life after death it would be along the lines described by Buffy in the early sixth season episode After Life:

"Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form... but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about dimensions or theology or any of... but I think I was in heaven."

Of course, Buffy had just been yanked out of there by her well-meaning friends resurrecting her after she sacrificed her life to save the world (at the end of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Season Five), but that doesn't stop it from sounding wonderful.

Before things get too maudlin or I start waxing philosophically, let's drag this round to gaming. A lot of games fixate on their universe/world's answer to Hell (because that's a good battleground/rescue zone/artefact retrieval site), but how would you go about depicting your world's equivalent to Heaven?

In Peter Jackson's The Return of The King movie we have the famous Gandalf quote:

"No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it... White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."

Meanwhile in The Chronicles of Narnia novels there is an enormous, standing wave at the edge of the world, beyond which are the "impossibly tall" mountains of Aslan's Country (i.e. Heaven).

The final Narnia book, The Last Battle, concludes thus:

"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before."

So let's imagine your character dies in a hard-fought conflict, and wakes up in a place like those described above (or Valhalla, if that's more their speed).

But then - back in the "real world" - they get resurrected by, or on behalf of, their companions, dragged out of this idyllic afterlife... don't you think there's a chance they'd be as pissed off as Buffy was?

The Three Deaths Of Your Player-Character

Reading The Three Deaths Of Conan, from 1990's The Savage Sword Of Conan The Barbarian issue 176, my mind began to ponder the role-playing potential of the situation our Cimmerian hero found himself in.

Penned by Chuck Dixon and Gary Kwapisz, The Three Deaths sees Conan ensnared by a sorcerer who then taunts him with predictions of his ultimate fate, extrapolated from Tarot-like cards - the first three of which presage grizzly deaths (or, in one case, a 'living death').

In the comic, each of these possible futures is played out as a story-within-the-story, so could you do this with a player-character in your game?

In a sense I see this as a variation on my "How I Met Your Mother" thought-experiment, but with the position of narrator shifting from one of the players to a powerful NPC (in this case, a mighty sorcerer).

This set-up would also, I guess, work better in a one-on-one situation with the player running a high-level character he really has a vested interest in.

The DM - as the mage - would draw a number of 'cards' and then play out, with the PC, a mini-scenario that is a possible 'future' for the character. Clearly it would have to be a particularly gruelling scenario, although not unbelievably biased, that the character would have only a slim chance of surviving.

Would you - as DM - have pre-designed these scenarios or would you feel brave enough to really draw cards from a pack and wing a scenario, based on your knowledge of the character and player?

Obviously, none of the damage the character sustains during this "vision" will be "real" - but what rewards would the character gain? Possibly experience points - for having 'lived through' the moment - but also some circumstantial bonus to future die rolls should he ever find himself in a situation that mirrors the scenario that the mage claimed was his possible future.

Perhaps this is a bit too "new school" for us "old school" grognards, but I could see this being an interesting diversion during an established campaign when not all the players can make it one evening.

In the comic, the sorcerer drew a fourth card, which he never got to see, that showed Conan wearing a crown and sitting on a throne...

Lights! Camera! Die Roll! Set-Piece Ideas For Gaming

By Elizabeth Thompson - Royal Collection , Public Domain, Link

Great memories - that is "magic moments" in roleplaying games - often come from the unplanned and unexpected, but that's not to say some gentle nudging and downright scheming from the Gamesmaster is inappropriate.

Browsing the deep back catalogue of Craig Oxbrow's excellent inspirational resource The Watch House (if you're into sci-fi and/or Doctor Who gaming then you need to read his Door In Time blog as well) I came across an article he'd written on Six Staples Of SF/F Series, by way of Den Of Geek.

These standards are:

• The Bodyswap
• The Time Loop
• Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence
• Alternate Dimensions
• The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate
• The Dream Episode

And all are immediately applicable to the anime-inspired fantasy campaign I'm kicking around at the moment while the Tuesday Knights get all pulpy in Pete's new Outgunned Adventures game (season two of his epic weird science campaign).

Tie these "standards" into my own "wish list" of cool moments and there's plenty of meat for potentially memorable adventures, if I'm GM enough to script plots that can do these tropes justice.

I guess, in part, all this comes from my passion for visual media (films, TV, and comics in particular) and thus my desire to emulate moments I see in these at our table.

The main bullet points from my "wish list" were:

• Have the players running the defence of a "hopeless situation", ridiculously outnumbered by an implacable foe, as seen at Rorke's Drift in Zulu, Dros Delnoch in David Gemmel's Legend, and Helm's Deep in The Lord of The Rings. To name but three.
  
  
• A "Horatio Holds The Bridge" moment - I'd just discovered D&D when this poem was read to us at school and the two just clicked.
  
  
• An interesting time travel story (cf. Doctor Who et al)
  
  
• The party encounters cosmic entities that threaten the world and only the heroes can stop them - every Marvel/DC comic book that features this sort of stuff inspires me to greater madness, combined with a lifelong love of the works of HP Lovecraft.
  
  
• Rescuing a trapped companion from incarceration in the pit of Hell - this came from reading the dedication pages in my original (and treasured) Arduin Grimoire Trilogy, by Dave Hargrave, where he mentions an epic campaign to free his own character.
  
  
• Having the players caught up in a war between angels and demons.

Originally my list was drawn up for a legacy D&D campaign, but the ideas are so broad, universal, and potentially over-the-top that they work just as well for anime fantasy game in the same vein as Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, and Record of Lodoss War.

A Real-World Dungeon Adventure From The 10th Century

If you are an old school dungeoneer then you really need to read this actual 10th Century account of a very Dungeons & Dragons adventure in a mysterious castle in Egypt (from Medievalists.net).

There are monsters (giant snakes and an automaton), treasure, riddles... the works!

Beyond the inspirational value of the story itself, from the brilliantly named Book Of Strangers, and the fact that it "confirms" D&D is real, I was particularly taken by this quote:

"It was popular in the medieval Middle East for people to inscribe poems and other writings in places like taverns and gardens, mostly anonymously."

I can see my campaign world featuring a lot more graffiti in the future.

ADVENTURE HOOK: The Tourists

Photo by Andrew Lvov on Unsplash

A Dungeons & Dragons-y adventure hook presented in the style of The Knights Of The Dinner Table's Bait & Tackle column.

SETTING: Town/City

BAIT: Having been reasonably successful as tunnel grubbers and earned themselves a reputation as adventurers, the group is approached by the servant of a local well-to-do nobleman (or even the king/emperor, depending on your campaign setting) with an offer that's too good to refuse.

In return for a ridiculously large sum of money, the servant's master wants the adventurers to take his son (and some of his friends) with them on their next underground expedition.

The reward will only be paid on the safe return of the princeling and his chums, provided they have some trophies to show for their troubles.

TACKLE: The young nobleman/prince, and his 1d4-strong entourage, are decent enough fellows, but total incompetents. More Bertie Wooster than Dennis The Menace. Despite insisting that they be first into battle with any 'exciting' monsters (i.e. exotic creatures rather than commonplace humanoids), they will be rubbish in combat (dropping their weapons, stumbling etc), prone to creating noise at inopportune moments ("Fool of a Took!") and a general nuisance to the party.

However, should the adventurers try anything stupid like kidnapping the young prince and holding him to ransom, they will incur the wrath of the entire region and almost certainly find themselves hounded by a massive armed force (as will happen if any of their charges are killed or severely crippled; cuts and bruises are expected, but anything more will be deemed a breach of contract).

Of course, if all goes to plan, the player-characters will not only earn themselves a pretty penny but gain a useful ally (and possible drinking buddy) in the princeling and his cronies.

DUNGEON MASTER TIP: It might be an idea, at least in combat (although not role-playing) to allocate each member of the prince's group to one of the players - so that they are responsible for making their die rolls. The prince and his entourage are, naturally, first (or zero) level characters and only interested in fighting beasties that will make good trophies if their heads are mounted on the palace walls.